Hearthstone

[Metro]

Noble sacrifice and voodoo doctor are terrible arena cards but the rest of your deck seems okay. Mage is not overrated in arena but it does depend on you getting a healthy dose of their spells.

 

[King Arthur]

Metro
It was mainly the lack two-drops and overwhelming amount of bad one-drops that concerned me. The overall card quality was slightly below par, so I expected to fall behind in the early game and then never catch up.

Believe me when I say I've had better decks fair a lot worse.

On mage: it's widely considered to be the best class in arena, so when I say it's overrated I mean that it's not at the top. I think that the reputation mage has is due to noobs not playing around flamestrike, getting owned by flamestrike, and then crying about flamestrike being OP. It's certainly a strong class if you can grab it's good spells, but the same can be said about any class.

On drafting: a big determiner for arena is how well the draft goes for you. An obvious but overlooked factor in drafting is the ratio of good cards to bad cards in a classes card pool. On the outset, looking at shaman you'd think it would be a very good class for arena. Good hero power for arena. A strong weapon. Lots of great cards for keeping up in tempo (flame elly, lightning, hex). But there's a major downside: there's a disproportionate amount of trash cards in the card pool. Lots of windfury shit. Wierd cards like totemic might and ancestral healing. The class is great when you can get it's good cards, but there's a high likelihood that you'll end up being weighed down by sub-par picks due to the draft pool.

Mages are perhaps on the low end of things when it comes to card pool. They have some good stuff, but at the same time they have five secrets, all of which are bad, two minions that synergize with secrets, and some other typical junk that all classes have. I'm not about to tally up the ratios for all classes to see if mage is on the lower end, but my intuition tells me that it is so.

Of course there are lots of other factors as well -- far too many for analysis -- I just think it's food for thought to consider these ratios.

My own runs as mage have been mediocre, and according to Trump mage isn't his best arena class either. Among skilled players, it seems that paladin is consistently near the top, and that priest is up there as well. Incidentally, those two classes seem to have less trashy cards than mage.

 

[Metro]

Priest class cards, on average, are among the worst in the game.

 

[King Arthur]

http://www.hearthpwn.com/cards?filter-class=64

Looking them up now and the only trash I see is dispel, mass dispel, mind blast and lightwell. Granted there are some iffy ones like divine spirit, but I'd rather have divine spirit than, say, a mage secret, or a totemic might. In constructed priest is perhaps the worst, but in arena the games are a lot slower and more tempo focused, so even divine spirit can reasonably be expected to perform decently.

I guess you're also referring to thought steal and mind vision. Those are very poor in constructed because decks rely a lot more on sleek synergy for value. For a miracle rogue, conceal is extremely good. For a priest, not so much. In arena however, that sort of synergy is much more rare, so it isn't unlikely that a mind vision would net you a decent card. It's still somewhat on the bad side, but again it's an order of magnitude better than what I'd designate as trash.

This probably won't be resolved because these comparisons rely too much on intuition. When you compare divine spirit to vaporize you might consider vaporize less bad, while I'd consider divine spirit top contender, and the way the game works there'd be no telling who's right. So I won't convince you by this stuff. But I know what I know, and I know that with mage I find myself weighed down by bad cards more than with priest.

 

[Metro]

Divine Spirit and Inner Fire are awful and never used in constructed... or arena.

 

[Damned Registrations]

If you've never used them in arena you must get amazing options all the fucking time. Mine usually look something like "A shitty Murloc" "A pirate" "Wisp". I'd consider Divine Spirit to be a fucking godsend compared to those.

 

[Grinolf]

Priest have some very good cards. There are whole bunch ones, that have the words "2 for 1" written over them, like Shield, Thoughtsteal, Madness, Soulpriest, Enforcer, Cabal, Mind Control. And not to forget about excellent Cleric and Death. Also Pain, Nova and Holyfire are very useful ones. Other cards are underwhelming, but so with all other classes.
And as was said, Divine Spirit isn't the worst pick. It is a poor version of Shield or Enforcer, but it still "2 for 2" in most cases and have a remote possibility to be much better.
Also I don't find Thoughtsteal to be bad in the constructed. Un fact average quality of cards there are much better than in the arena. And it is only bad against aggro, which is already a favorable enemy, and Miracle, but that match is doomed anyway. It is still probably ti greedy for me to run 2 of them.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

The reason Mage is considered the best arena class isn't solely because of Flamestrike (even though Flamestrike is amazing, and having to play around it against every Mage is in itself a non-trivial handicap). As I see it, it comes down to two factors:

1. Very powerful and versatile Common class cards. It's not just that Water Elemental is powerful, it's powerful in most situations, and regardless of what else you have in your deck. Good class cards for other classes are often much more situational (Shadow Madness for instance).

2. A hero ability that is pretty much unconditionally useful throughout an entire match. Abilities of other classes are either much more situational (Warlock or Priest) or come with drawbacks/synergies the Mage ability doesn't have. Only ability that comes close in terms of general usefulness is the Paladin one, but it's not nearly as versatile. Rogue ability is very powerful and comes with nice synergies, but isn't as consistent, and the life loss from hitting stuff can be a deal breaker when under pressure. And in Arena, consistency is key.

That said, Mages are pretty boring to play in Arena, they're really straightforward to the point where it feels like you're just going through the motions. Rogues are probably the most fun, imo, followed by Priests and Shamans.

 

[Metro]

If you've never used them in arena you must get amazing options all the fucking time. Mine usually look something like "A shitty Murloc" "A pirate" "Wisp". I'd consider Divine Spirit to be a fucking godsend compared to those.

There are maybe a dozen cards that are worse than those to pick in Arena. Wisp, yeah that's worse. Murlock or Pirate? Depends. I'd rather have a mediocre minion for early game than what is often a waste of a slot.

It is a poor version of Shield or Enforcer

More like an EXTREMELY poor version considering shield draws another card and Enforcer gives you a 6 mana minion.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Pirates without weapons are awful. Most of the murlocs are outright worse than playing nothing since they might benefit your opponent.

 

[Metro]

Bloodsail Raider is, at worst, a 2/3 for 2 mana -- that's not awful in arena. Murloc Tidehunter isn't, either. Grinolf can herp-a-derp about 2-for-1 but those cards are just as likely (arguably more likely) to be a 2-for-1 than DS. It's a bad card not worth taking 95% of the time.

 

[Damned Registrations]

A 2/3 for 2 is pretty much never going to be a 2 for 1. At best they'll be part of a 2 for 2.

 

[King Arthur]

Certain pirates and murlocks can be passable straight up warriors, but there are a lot more than twelve cards that are worse than divine spirit in arena.

http://i61.tinypic.com/2cyk1l5.png

This time I was somewhat surprised. The overall card quality was obvious when I drafted it, it's definitely a higher end deck, but it didn't seem exceptional. I was guessing eight wins, not twelve.

As it turned out, I was able to use certain utility cards (black knight, blood knight, blessing of wisdom) to maximum effect a number of times, and I'd say that at least four games were won largely due to those three cards. The rest of the time this deck simply drew very nice opening hands, so I was able to pressure most people down. The one game I lost was to a super-rush rogue.

That's another arena win as paladin for me. So far my record is three wins with pally, and two with rogue. I started playing a month ago, and this is out of about thirty attempts.

 

[DakaSha]

That isnt just the cards, but also the exceptionally good mana curve

 

[Metro]

A 2/3 for 2 is pretty much never going to be a 2 for 1. At best they'll be part of a 2 for 2.

Spoiler

ur ghey

Spoiler

No, seriously, stop drafting so poorly.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Seriously what scenario does that become a 2 for 1? When the opponet also has a 2/3 and you ping it with your hero power... and the enemy can't do the same for some reason?? Vs leper gnomes?

 

[J1M]

"Consistent luck" is a pretty bad argument to make.

If you want to claim something like that, you'd be better off suggesting that Blizzard has fiddled with the MMR of popular streamers...

 

[Metro]

Got two legendaries in a paladin draft!!! Gruul and Onyxia... (trust me they were the best of the lot)... and no consecrates. Also drafted Pyromancer at the first selection hoping to get an equality... NOPE!

 

[Jozoz]

Onyxia is fantastic in the Arena. One of the best curve toppers, imo.

Speaking of legendaries in Arena, I played my first arena run on the American server and drafted Sylvanas and Antonidas along with 3 fireballs and 3 polys.
Pretty easy 12 wins.

 

[Metro]

-_-

 

[zerotol]

the game is all about drawing the right cards at the right time, i lost an arena vs a guy that pyroblasted me, got back in the game and he topdecks a second (!!!!) pyro and kills me.

Yeah the skill

 

[King Arthur]

One funny story: once I had extreme card advantage and board advantage, but the other player's last card was deathwing (this was in arena) and I had no taunt. The only way out was to use mind control (what a perfect response!). So I use mind control and then the trap card 'counterspell' activates and I lose.

 

[Scruffy]

you know, i'm liking hearthstone, i still consider Magic more complex and intriguing and fun, but one thing magic should change and learn from hearthstone is the mana managing. Games you win or lose because someone is stuck on three mana, or keeps drawing lands, are not fun and should be somehow removed from the environment.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Well, Hearthstone honestly isn't THAT different in that regard. You can still get a hand of nothing but high cost cards (or the opposite late game) and get fucked over by the RNG. The odds aren't even that different, since MTG starts you off with 7 cards, which gives you a much better chance of having at least a few playable cards.

What would actually solve this issue is having a system where either all cards had variable costs, or you got to choose how expensive a card you wanted to draw. The later in particular would be pretty interesting I think, it'd allow for much larger decks, more control over the game, and a weaker hold of the RNG on the outcome.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

I would be hesitant to consider Hearthstone's streamlined mana management as an improvement over MtG, as that game uses lands for a lot more than just mana, and resource disruption strategies are a big deal in MtG in general. Of course, nothing stops HS from having cards that mess with the opponent's mana crystals. But lands in MtG did a lot more than just give one mana, and were sometimes absolute keystones to entire deck archetypes - Tolarian Academy, Mishra's Workshop, Bazaar of Baghdad, to name a few.

In terms of deckbuilding, as well, you could have fewer lands in a low average mana cost deck, and effectively achieve card advantage by having a higher density of threats, further enhanced by the use of utility lands such as Wasteland or Strip Mine. This is completely missing in HS, you get one mana crystal per turn, non-negotiable.

What, I think, is strictly better in HS, is the mulligan rule. Of course, a similar rule with 7 card hands in MtG could prove to be broken in some format, as it's essentially a buff to combo decks, but surely there is some kind of middle ground?

The one aspect of Hearthstone which I dislike the most compared to MtG is that the combat mechanics give the attacker too much of an advantage. This causes games to snowball really easily, especially in arena, where decks aren't likely to have a lot of effective "turnaround" cards. In MtG, it was much easier to not simply lose to someone playing a dude every turn and attacking with everything, because you could block with a creature you just played, and that it was you who decided on who hits what, making efficient trades easier.

Also, constructed has way too many decks which can deal 15+ damage from an empty board. It's just stupid.